Photographer of Families, Small People and Delightful Places, Travel and Lifestyle Writer and Blogger, Lives in Newcastle, Loves the North, Often Accompanied By A Beagle Named Holly Bobbins

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Hawthorns Summer Menu Launch, Crowne Plaza, Newcastle Upon Tyne

I increasingly visit a lot of hotels but Crowne Plaza remains one of my favourite hotel brands, it's the big rooms and the little touches like the It Works spray you get in every room to help you sleep at night, when you stay in hotels as often as I do, it's exactly those small touches which make you remember a brand. Last year I stayed at the Crowne Plaza, Victoria dock when I visited London in the summer.

The Crowne Plaza, Stephenson Quarter is a fairly new arrival to Newcastle and so when I received an invitation to their Hawthorns restaurant

summer menu launch I knew it was going to be a great event.

Hawthorns restaurant is bright and airy, spacious and swish, it oozes style and quality and with a commitment to use as much locally sourced produce as possible it's somewhere I'm happy to dine.

Amazing sea food, piles of cheeses, pretty platters of petit desserts all went together to serve up a feast which satisfied the eyes as much as it did the stomach. Oysters, Langoustines, prawns and mussels all served icy cold and fresh were as good as any seafood I'd previously eaten, the Oyster was divine, I never refuse Oysters, a good oyster makes you feel like you are swimming in the salty ocean on a calm tranquil day with the sunshine in the sky and blue all around you, to eat one is to be as close to nature as you can possibly imagine and whilst I realise they're not for everyone they are definitely for me!

As well as the platters of tasty foods there was also a BBQ serving up the freshest, tastiest meats, lamb cooked so perfectly that it simply melted in the mouth.

It wasn't just the food though, the Ouseburn coffee company were serving espresso martinis and Fentimans were also present serving fruity summer cocktails like the warm apple pie which reminded me of Saturday mornings baking with granny, only slightly more alcoholic. Add to that some live music, a DJ, pretty summer flower borders with towering alliums and a group of my lovely blogging friends Chloe, Pixie, Nyomi, Laura, Melissa and Ashleigh and you have yourself the perfect combination for a party you just don't want to leave.

After thoroughly sating my appetite with the tastiest morsels in the north combined with refreshments to delight even the pickiest of tastebuds I was sad to find that the time had slipped before me and all too soon it was time to go home and go for a run, yes I actually went for a run, I'm not sure how I even managed it after 4 alcoholic beverages, creme brulee, clotted cream, seafood, bbq, I can tell you though that I felt a lot more virtuous for having come home and gone for a run instead of just going home and going straight to bed!

I was invited to Hawthorns and wrote this article with my own views, photos and of course my own photos and I was so impressed by the offerings that I even bought afternoon tea vouchers for my lovely friends Laura and Harriet and I can't wait to go back in the summer with them.